


When Dark Meets Night

by Lyl



Series: Fractured [1]
Category: Numb3rs
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Criminals, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Psychopaths, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-19
Updated: 2010-07-19
Packaged: 2017-10-10 16:35:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/101834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyl/pseuds/Lyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This man is no federal agent, and no amount of window dressing will convince her otherwise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Dark Meets Night

The first time Megan sees him, he’s walking past her cell door with all the arrogance and poise of a newly minted Fed. It’s not the first time some newbie has come to Summerhill to try and prove themself, but Megan has trained herself to see beneath the surface, and what she finds in this man fascinates her.

There’s a distinct presence beneath the dark suit (off the rack) and the easy smile (forced civility) that intrigues her. This man is no federal agent, and no amount of window dressing will convince her otherwise. There is definitely something more to this dark haired man who has found his way into one of the more secure compounds in the US.

Summerhill Institute for the Criminally Insane, founded in 1963. Now just called Summerhill, because nobody wants to admit that they’ve been breeding more killers and sociopaths in recent decades. Megan thinks she should feel some sort of pride that her humble beginnings have led her here, locked up with the craziest of the crazy, but she’s locked up, her movements restricted by the limits of the restraint jacket, and that’s a sore point for her.

She pushes herself up against her door, peering awkwardly through the small window to try and catch a glimpse of the fake-Fed and the orderly escorting him. She bites her lip to keep the smile off her face when they stop two doors down from her. She can only see the back of the orderly’s head, but that’s more than enough for her to narrow her eyes as the rage builds up inside her.

Marco is an ass, and if – when – she gets out of this cell, he’s the first one that she’s going to kill. Slowly. She would have done it by now, but she’d killed three guards and five orderlies in the first two months, and has since been locked up tight in a restraint jacket. It doesn’t mean she can’t still take them out – she doesn’t need her arms free for that – but she’s smart enough to realize that it’s an advantage, one she will not give up until she’s assured of freedom.

Marco’s not the one she’s interested in at the moment, despite her deep and utter loathing for him. The fake-Fed is looking around like someone might jump out from the shadows and kill him at any moment. At least, that’s what Marco seems to assume as he tells the man that he’s perfectly safe, and goes on to rattle off the security setup that is actually quite impressive (biometrics, CCTV, armed guards – it’s the little touches that make this place distinctive). But that’s not what this is about, Megan can tell. The man is really taking in his surroundings; wall cameras, distances between cells, distance to the nurses station, red panic buttons on the walls, number of guards and rotations.

In short, he’s planning something.

The man’s eyes meet hers briefly before he steps inside the cell of a serial arsonist with a mildly impressive body count – nothing like hers, though – and Megan’s breath catches in her throat. That one look was enough send her heart pounding.

Alpha male. A truly dangerous one at that.

It was rare to find one in today’s society. Most tried to fake it or force it with a gun and violence and big talk, but they were nothing in comparison. This man did it through sheer force of personality, his self-confidence leaving no room for arrogance or failure.

She watches the hallway for an eternity before he comes back out again, a sympathetic Marco spewing platitudes about his lack of success in interviewing the arsonist.

Megan keeps her eyes on the man as the pair make their way back down the hall, passing by her door, and she’s not surprised when he meets her eyes. A small twitch at the corner of his mouth and a slight tilting of his head is all the acknowledgement he gives, but it is enough.

_I see. I know. I’ll be back._

Two nights later, Megan is suddenly aware of the complete and total silence that’s permeating the entire building. The sound of dogs, of electronics, of feet scuffling at the end of the hall, are all quiet. It makes her heart pound. The lights are dim, but they flicker briefly. Once.

Something is coming.

Marco has just finished his evening fun with her and is putting his pants back to rights, so he doesn’t see the foot she aims at the back of his head. He goes down hard, face first onto the concrete floor, and Megan has to restrain herself from ending it all too soon. She needs him unconscious, not dead – not yet, anyway.

It only takes a few minutes to get out of the jacket, but she’s been practicing for the past thirteen months, so it goes quicker than the first time she tried. Putting the thin hospital pants back on – sometimes Marco would leave her like that until the end of his shift, the bastard – she steps over his prone form, smiling slightly as his groans make bubbles in the blood pooling on the floor. A broken nose bleeds a lot.

Megan rolls him onto his back, searching for the keys to get her out of her cell, and has to slam his head into the floor again to stop his flailing arms. She kicks him a few more times for good measure before going back to her search, the crack of breaking bones sending trills of pleasure down her spine. Keys in hand, she opens the door with a click of the lock and feels the sudden rush of freedom sing in her veins.

She’s really not the least bit surprised to see the fake-Fed standing in front of her. Instead of a cheap suit and squeaky loafers, he’s dressed all in black and covered with weapons.

“Nice of you to join the party,” he tells her mildly, and Megan has to hold herself still. Before, he’d been hiding behind a shiny fake badge and a badly tailored suit, but not now. He’s watching her with the eyes of a predator, giving off an aura of barely leashed animal rage. He’s danger and rage and tightly controlled anger, all directed towards a single goal.

Megan knows better than to get between him and his goal, whatever it is.

“I was wondering where he was,” he adds, looking into her cell at the downed man. His voice is light and carefree, in direct opposition to his body language. “He still alive?”

Megan lets her eyes linger on the knife at his waist before meeting his eyes, and breathes a little easier at the appreciation she sees there. Not for her looks or her body, this she knows instinctively, but for her actions and her control.

Without breaking eye contact, he hands her the knife from his waist, hilt first. He waits patiently as she goes back into the room and makes sure that Marco’s death will be slow and painful. She takes his key card and his thumb, just in case they need it later on. (Dead bolts are still used for patient rooms, but the rest of the place went high tech years ago.) When she’s done, she closes the door behind her on the off chance he regains consciousness before he’s lost too much blood.

She keeps the knife at her side, and he doesn’t ask for it back. Her heart beat slows a little in response, calming the effects of the adrenaline.

They move silently down the hallway, her bare feet making no more noise than his combat boots, and this close, she can see the shiny splatters of blood in the black of his clothes. He doesn’t seem worried about avoiding the cameras, and Megan would be disappointed if he hasn’t taken care of that problem already.

They’re moving in sync by the time they get halfway down the corridor, and Megan realizes that she’s met her match. This man, this strong and confident alpha male, is more than a match for her, and something primal in her reacts strongly to that. If she were at all interested in sex – with anyone – she would be all hot and bothered by now.

Good thing that won’t be a problem. Ever.

She has a feeling his sexual partners don’t last long.

Turning the corner, she spots a guard making his rounds. She’s ready to jump and end him, the urge to give back some of what she’s endured in this place is pulsing in her veins. Instead, the man beside her pauses, raises a gun and fires. A soft pop is all she hears as the guard goes down, and Megan realizes that there’s a silencer attached to the end of the nine millimeter.

They move silently down the corridors of Summerhill, taking down guards and orderlies as they go, trading off kills until there are no more.

“That was the last one,” he says, and Megan breathes a silent sigh of relief. As much as she’s relishing the experience of hunting with him, she really wants to leave this place.

He gives her a long look, and Megan doesn’t wilt. She’s stared down police and Feds and psychologists and profilers, and more than a few of the inmates at Summerhill, all of whom were use to underestimating her because she was a woman.

This isn’t like that. He’s not trying to dominate her or show her who’s boss. He’s gauging her abilities, weighing her actions and usefulness as he determines if she really is worthy.

She is, and she knows it. He knows it too, if the twitch of his lips is anything to go by.

“Who are you here for?” she asks him, because she’s under no illusion that it’s for her. She’s a secondary objective, maybe not even that, but she’s not about to object.

“Charlie Eppes,” he tells her. That’s when Megan clues in. This is Don Eppes, Charlie’s brother.

She’s heard the stories and read the papers, but that was before she was thrown in here. What she remembers makes her stomach flutter in excitement.

Charlie, the math genius with a manic personality, in and out of various institutes throughout his life, dangerous only when he was lucid enough to test out his math proofs in the real world. His last girlfriend had died screaming, his equations carved into her skin with a screwdriver. His brother Don, on the other hand, had been labeled a petty thug with just enough training to be dangerous. No one had taken him seriously, despite the body count, until he’d joined up with Charlie.

Then the country had taken notice. A few bank jobs here, a gas attack on a subway there, and they were off. Two brothers causing death and destruction throughout the country, evading police at every turn.

Charlie had been at Summerhill for two months, and Megan was only surprised it had taken Don this long to get him out.

“317-B,” she told him, knowing that he already knew where his brother was. He smiled back at her, big and wide and open, and she could see why the late DA Robin Brooks had destroyed evidence and sold out safe houses for this man.

Didn’t help her in the end, though.

“You want to let some of the rats out of their cages?” he asks her, eyes flicking to the keys she still carried.

“Anyone in particular?” she demands, while her mind flips through the rolodex of names and disorders she’s learned while locked in.

“Anyone who’ll make a lot of noise and a big mess for the cops to clean up,” he tells her, and Megan smiles in appreciation. Eppes wants a distraction, cover for the inevitable man hunt that will come out of this, and Megan is giddy with anticipation.

“I’ve got a few names,” she says, grabbing the keys and moving to the first room on her mental map. She hears a quiet chuckle from Eppes, and it slides over her skin like a comforting blanket. She’s starting to understand what makes him so dangerous, and it makes her like him even more. He’s charming and intelligent and scheming and devious; with a smile or wink he can make you smile, and with a single sentence, he can make you trust him.

Megan wonders if she’s simply falling into the same trap as countless others, but shakes herself out of that line of thought. She can see the charm and the smile and the likeability, but she’s not fooled by it. The man beneath the exterior is what intrigues her; it’s what is seducing her to his side in a way that no man has ever done before. He’s primal and boundless and completely without morals.

She opens doors and urges people out as quickly as she can, only choosing those she knows are smart and dangerous and will revel in their freedom. These are the ones that will be hard to catch, but will leave a bloody path in their wake.

After only a handful of releases, Megan turns back to where Eppes is occupied with his brother, never giving a second thought to running while she can. She’s already his.

Somewhere along the way, probably after the third guard they’d taken down, Megan realized that she was leaving with Eppes. Neither of them had spoken about it, but a shared look had solidified the agreement. She’s been building her case ever since, determined to stay with him long after they leave.

She stops just outside the door to Charlie’s room, and hears Eppes’ voice whispering softly. Peeking in, she barely notices the walls covered in equations, written in ink and blood, too taken with the sight of Eppes cajoling his brother to lucidity.

“Don?” whispers a quiet, broken voice, and Megan breathes a silent sigh of relief. Carrying out someone who’s fighting you or catatonic is never a good way to make an escape.

“Time to go, Charlie,” he says, pulling the younger man up and out of the room.

Charlie freezes when he sees her, and Megan is glad of the step back she’d taken. Eppes might have agreed to take her with them, but Megan knows that if Charlie has any problems with her, she won’t live to see the morning.

“This is Megan Reeves,” introduces Eppes, and Megan is really not surprised that he knows who she is.

“From NYU? The PhD in psychology?” asks Charlie, some life coming back into his dark eyes. “You did that paper on mental stability and psyche fracture in response to physical and mental abuse.”

“You read that?” She smiles at him, proud, as always, when her work is recognized in the larger context.

“It was a brilliant experiment with a wonderful logical flow to the data,” he confirms, and Megan’s smile stretches a little bit more. “We really must talk.”

The way he says it makes Megan feel giddy again, because he’s admiring her proudest work to date. It was also what put her on the cops radar, but that’s beside the point – the police hadn’t been able to see past the bodies to the essence of her hypothesis. But Charlie, here’s a man who can appreciate the time and effort she’d put into her work, and isn’t appalled by the generation of the data.

“The mutual appreciation society can wait until later,” interrupts Eppes, moving them towards the door. There are bodies littering the corridors and nurses stations, but Megan barely glances at them.

They exit the building by the front door, and Megan blinks at the nondescript black sedan waiting for them.

A few minutes later, they are on their way through the front gates when Eppes stops the car, pulls out a detonator and turns around. Megan cranes her neck, and watches from the back seat as a series of explosions rip through Summerhill, fireballs lighting up the sky in quick succession.

Megan lets out a bark of laughter, even as she sees Charlie frowning at his brother. “There were better placement patterns to garner total destruction,” Charlie pouts from the passenger seat, disgruntled by the seemingly inefficient blast pattern.

“I don’t want total destruction, Charlie,” states Eppes, starting the car again. “I want it to burn long and hot, destroying as much as it can.”

Megan watches the byplay between the two, and sees that Charlie is still somewhat put out, if the pursed lips are anything to go by.

“Besides, I didn’t have you there to tell me where the best places were,” adds Eppes, ruffling his brother’s hair affectionately.

Charlie doesn’t say anything else, but Megan can tell he’s pleased.

She finds the interplay between them completely fascinating, and wonders what roll she’ll play in their dynamic.

She catches Eppes’ eyes in the rearview mirror, and the lightning quick smile he flashes her tells her he knows what she’s thinking.

Life just got interesting again, and she can’t wait for the ride.

END


End file.
